


Brain Stew

by AmbitiousSkychild



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Axel and Roxas are literally the most badass couple, Kairi is so sweet, M/M, Pining Riku, Roxas loves his cousin very much, Sora and Roxas are cousins, dark Sora, he pines so hard holy shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 21:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11677836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbitiousSkychild/pseuds/AmbitiousSkychild
Summary: "I was the goofball. I made people laugh. I made sure everyone was having a good time and no one was feeling left out. I made myself a joke.” He sighed. “But the thing about that is when you make yourself a joke, you really become one.”Alternate Reality in which Sora, like a lot of teenagers do, decides he'd rather be taken seriously instead of as the class clown he'd been his whole life. Riku loves him either way.





	Brain Stew

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last year to be purely self-indulgent, but then it actually turned into something good, and I'm proud of it? That stuff about being a joke is pretty real, too. I'm pretty guilty of it. Sora's lucky to have Riku right?

He had an exam to sit in six hours, but he sprung awake out of a dead sleep the second he heard Green Day’s _Brain Stew_.

“Where are you are you okay?” Riku fretted into the phone all in one breath.

“Yeah,” Sora laughed back, but the sound was just a little higher pitched than usual, just a little hysterical, “ _yeah_. Yeah, I’m fine. You always answer the phone like that,” he laughed again. Like it was inconceivable. Like it was difficult to understand. Like there wasn’t a standing track record. Like it wasn’t two in the morning and Riku wasn’t being jolted awake by a phone call.

“Sora, where are you?” Riku pressed, patting against his chest none too gently, willing the beating to slow. He sat up, tossed his sheets off of him, pulled at his t-shirt bunched against his throat.

“I’m fine,” Sora expressed again, this time much less convincing, though it hadn’t been that much of a selling point the first time. “I just – I didn’t need anything, Riku. I’m sorry I woke you up, I really thought you – that you might be studying. I’m – I’m okay, really.”

“Okay, well, I’m just going to be driving around aimlessly then,” Riku threatened. He grabbed his keys up off his bedside table, sure to jingle them so Sora heard them. “So you might as well give me a place to go.”

Sora sighed long and low. Riku thought he heard a hitch in his breath. “Hooks Park.”

It was an hour’s drive away, but Riku usually got away with speeding there this late at night and he knew shortcuts to just about anywhere that got to Sora. He stood from his bed and slid his earlier discarded track pants up his legs. He grabbed his backpack on his way out his bedroom door. “Thank you. Give me about thirty-five minutes.”

“Riku, you really don’t have to do this.”

“Keep your phone on you and call me if anything happens.” Riku hung up and took the stairs down two at a time.

*

When Riku was eighteen, he was beginning to understand the concept of car rides and its relevance to his own life. Everything up until that point had been no more than a twenty-minute walk away, but college was going to be different.

As a reward for getting himself accepted in, his father had passed him down the old station wagon they never used and had sent Riku on his way, but Sora on the other hand. Sora thought the whole thing was exciting and invigorating and could hardly contain himself when Riku first made the pointless thirty-second drive to his house.

He had been waiting on the front porch and had all but run to the car door. Riku had had to badger him to wear his seatbelt and the first thing he did once they hit the road, out of sight of his parents and his house and any nosy neighbors was to light up a cigarette.

He took a deep drag, rolled down his window and blew it out, turned to Riku with that shit-eating grin.

“Riku, you could go anywhere.”

And it was still all so new to Riku: Sora smoking, Sora’s restless attitude, Sora’s sudden wanderlust, but he was still oh, so captivating. Riku couldn’t imagine ever needing to go _anywhere_. But Riku nodded, turned the radio down, only for Sora to turn it right back up, grinning like he knew it annoyed him. “Yeah, but everything I need is right here. School, Mom and Dad, my job, Kairi. You.”

Sora smiled at him, eyes lingering on his face a little longer than was strictly necessary. Riku could feel it. He could always feel when Sora was looking at him. “Yeah but in a month that’s gonna be different, Riku. You’re going to DIU, I’m going to State and our entire world is about to expand.”

Sora always gushed about it like it was going to be this new, transformative thing, and he was probably right, but to Riku, it was all just new uncharted territory. “Yeah. We’re gonna have to grow the hell up.”

Sora took another deep drag of his cigarette. “Sure fucking are,” he exhaled.

That was new, too.

“But we’re only gonna be twenty minutes, tops, away from each other. Kairi’s going to State, too, so we’re still gonna see each other all the time.”

“I know.” They only talked about this regularly since the summer started.

“And that’s how it’s gonna be. We’re never gonna go too far away from each other, all of us. Even when we became boring adults with jobs and mortgages and doctor’s visits and fucking _dental insurance_.”

“Fucking dental insurance,” Riku scoffed, taking on an offended tone.

“The very _notion_ ,” Sora laughed.

*

The parking lot was entirely empty. Turning off his car, he grabbed his keys and glanced around. He stepped into the grass and his phone blared _Brain Stew_.

“I heard a car just now, is it you?”

“Yeah,” Riku breathed, startled and now very on edge. “Yeah, where are you?”

“I’m coming,” Sora said instead and ended the call.

“What?” Riku whispered to the dial tone. He took slower, more cautious steps further into the park, looking all around him as he progressed until finally, he saw movement behind a couple of skinny trees surrounded by bushes and Sora emerged. “What the hell?”

Sora walked briskly to him, scooped up his hand once he reached him and dragged him backward a few steps until Riku could gather his bearings. “Come on.”

“What?” Riku managed, hitting the unlock button on his keys. Sora made a beeline for the passenger’s side car door. “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Sora!”

Sora was already buckling his seatbelt by the time Riku had opened his door. “Come on, Riku, _hurry_ ,” Sora hissed.

His own prior instinct was to panic, but he read the frenzy in Sora’s voice and the fear in his eyes and it all sprung him into quicker motion. He locked the car, jammed his keys in the ignition and peeled it out of the parking lot before even adjusting his own seat belt.

“I’m sorry,” Sora said finally, after the park was long out of sight. Sora quit looking intermittently behind them. “It’s fine now, just earlier when I was waiting, I think I saw Rai and Fuu driving around looking for me.”

_“What?!”_

“It’s okay, I hid,” Sora said quickly, and Riku saw out of the corner of his eye as he turned to face him. “They didn’t see me. They don’t know I was there and they don’t know I’m with you. They can’t tell Seifer anything.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I told you to call me if something happened.”

“Sorry,” Sora said slowly. “I really didn’t think about it. I knew you were on your way and there was nothing you could do that moment.”

“But what if they saw you? What if they got to you?”

“But they didn’t.”

“Goddammit, Sora!”

“Please don’t get mad,” Sora said quietly, helplessly, exhausted. “ _Please_.” And Riku heard the strain of his words and the _rawness_ of his voice and he wondered how long Sora had been screaming before he called him.

“I’m not,” Riku sighed. “I just worry. You’re kinda really important to me. Can’t stand to think that something could happen to you and I’m not there. Especially if I’m on my way to you.”

“Riku,” Sora said softly, and it was all he said. The sound of tires on gravel and a roaring engine brought them home.

 

Riku noticed only when they crossed the threshold of his front door, that Sora didn’t have anything on him. No backpack, or even a jacket. Whatever had happened, he had left immediately and without any forethought.

He tried not to make a show of inspecting his friend, but it was habitual by now. “So,” he started, aiming for casual but failing miserably. He locked the door behind himself and met Sora, standing awkwardly between the small living room and smaller dining room. “What happened?”

Sora turned to face him, “Seif–”

“ _Shit_ , Sora,” Riku hissed out, rushing toward him. “Holy _shit_!”

Sora jumped back, startled at the outburst, then quickly lifted his hands to cover his mouth. “Jesus, Riku, cool it!”

Riku shook his head, grabbed onto Sora’s shoulder. “Sora just stop it and let me see.”

Sora’s eyes were wide and frenzied over his hands. After a beat, he dropped his gaze, then heavily dropped his arms, revealing his bottom lip – split down the center, caked in blood, and most definitely swelling. Riku’s hands found Sora’s jaw, tilting his face upward. One of his fingers came up to brush it, pausing as Sora flinched. Sora’s gaze found its way back to Riku, then darted away again and again until, finally, he glared. “Stop just… _looking_ at me like that.”

“Like what?” Riku snapped, forcing his eyes up, away from Sora’s lip. “Like my very best friend’s all banged up and I’m freaking out?”

“Like I’m a charity case.”

Riku felt his heartrate plummet and he dropped his hands. Sora looked off to the side with sad, slated blue eyes under furrowed brows. Riku wanted to bring him back, bring his eyes back to him, to say loud and sure that _you’re not, Sora, Jesus, you’re not a charity case_.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said instead, “about what happened.”

The trance was broken, Sora’s _I’m fine_ mask returning full-force. A dry smile twisted its way onto Sora’s face. “Seifer. You know.” He stepped around Riku, walking up and down the center aisle. “I was talking about maybe coming home. Just for a weekend. I miss Roxas, you know? I miss my friends.”

Riku nodded. He was the one most qualified to know.

“Of course, he didn’t want to,” Sora continued, voice a little loud and sardonic as he began to pace. “I even told him that I don’t have to come back alone – he can come with me!”

Riku didn’t like that. He knew better than to say it.

“But he got mad,” Sora huffed, looking Riku in the eye for a long moment, then he went back to pacing. “He got so _mad_ at me. He started yelling at me like that was a rational response to wanting to come home! He yelled for so long that I eventually just told him – told him not to worry about it anymore, I wouldn’t come home, I’d just stay there with him, in that house.”

Riku didn’t like that either. He knew better than to say it.

Sora rolled his eyes and made another lap. “But it didn’t matter, by then, it was too late I had already… _said_ enough, I’d already opened my big fat mouth. He was being an asshole and I wanted to _leave_. So, I tried to leave. And he grabbed me and he turned me around and he grabbed my face in his hands trying to make me look at him and I shoved him.” He ran his right thumb along a long, thin scar down his right palm, a comfort tick Sora had had most his life now. “He went flying back and he hit the wall and that only made him angrier at me.

“And he lunged at me so I punched him and he punched me back, I’m not a victim,” Sora explained with conviction. “I just… _ran_ and called you,” Sora sighed, stopping in his pacing to rub sheepishly at his neck. “And I waited in the park and when I saw Fuu’s truck, I _hid_. Just like a fucking victim.”

“You’re the farthest thing from a victim,” Riku managed, weighing the acceptable level of righteous anger he should show just yet.

“Right I only had to go crawling to you to save me in the middle of the night like some sort of damsel in distress,” Sora snapped, arms crossed and eyes lethal. He groaned, rolled his eyes. “ _Again_.”

“Dude I’m happy to do it,” Riku snapped back. He collected himself. This argument was perpetual. Sora needed Riku to be there and then got mad at himself for feeling like he made Riku be there. Riku had argued every side, every turn, every angle, but Sora remained headfast and stubborn and _Sora_. And Riku remained hopeless. “I’m gonna always be there when you need me and you can’t really stop me. You know that, right?”

Sora laughed. It was bitter, but a sign that Riku’s words of assurance were doing their job in assuring him. “Maybe I stop calling you up every time I get sad.”

“Maybe I start calling you every time _I_ do,” Riku shrugged, trying and failing to keep the smugness out of his retort. “It’s not like I don’t need you, too.”

Sora couldn’t control it, Riku saw him trying, but Sora couldn’t hide the grin blooming across his face at those words. Finally, Sora brought his eyes up to meet Riku’s on the other side of the center aisle, open and unguarded and so, so blue. “Always had a way with words, this one.”

There were a thousand things Sora had a way with.

“Listen, I don’t like that he tries to keep you from home,” Riku said instead.

“Yeah,” Sora sighed deeply, “I don’t either. He gets worried that if I leave I’m not going to want to stay with him. He already knows you guys don’t like him, but I told him if he cares about me then he’ll get past that and be a better person.”

Riku didn’t just not like him. Riku wished death on him at least once a day. “Sora, what can I do to–” a yawn tore from his throat, however, before he could express to Sora just how much he wanted to save him, fix everything for him.

“Shit, oh my God,” Sora said slowly, stepping closer to Riku and pulling out his phone. “Jesus, it’s four in the morning and I’ve just been talking, go to sleep.”

Riku chuckled, but let Sora drag him by the arm back into his room. “Yeah, but only if you’re sure you’re fine.”

“I’ve been telling you all night I’m fine, worry about yourself,” Sora answered.

“On one condition.”

“Here we go.”

“You sleep in my fucking bed and I sleep on the couch.”

Sora stopped in the hallway, turned to stare at him showing him a glare in the process. “Fine. Fine, Riku just go to sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” Riku smiled, taking the lead this time, into his room. “I just washed my sheets the other day and I have spare clothes in the closet.” But Sora knew that. “Put some ice on your face, and go the fuck to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sora waved him off, slowly stripping himself of his shirt on the way to the closet revealing tan skin covered in freckles. Back muscles moved with him as he carried himself across the room.

Riku walked himself back out into the living room accompanied by the stinging of his nails biting into his own palms.

He stripped out of his track pants and pulled the spare blanket from behind the couch. He plugged up his phone and stretched himself out across his couch. He listened to the sound of a clock ticking somewhere until there was only silence and sleep.

Sometime in the night, he thought he might have heard sock-clad feet shuffling into the room and never heard them leave.

*

When Sora was seventeen, his smile turned sly.

It happened overnight. Gone was the sugary sweet smile that had become the brunet – all teeth and gums and braces and squinted eyes and round cheeks – and in its place shown something teasing and cunning and layered.

Senior year, littered with drinking and other activities of ill repute, revealed a hidden side of themselves to them all, but none as dramatic as Sora. Sora, who began to smell like cigarette smoke, but still faintly like beach waves and bonfires. Sora, who finally got his braces removed and his inhibitions right along with them. Sora, whose eyes no longer sparkled, but began to smolder. Sora, who heard a joke and no longer guffawed, but chuckled, breathy and gravelly.

Who spoke with his eyes now, more than with his words. Whose lips peeled back over pearly, white teeth, slow and tentative like the thick, red curtains of a Broadway Stage.

When Sora was seventeen, his smile turned sly.

Riku would have mourned the death of the sunny one if his stupid, overdue teenage libido hadn’t found the sly one so goddamn sexy.

*

Behind closed, stubborn eyelids, Riku only knew that the apartment smelled sweet like cake batter. And syrup, and fried eggs. He was staying the night at Sora’s house and his mom was making breakfast. He wondered what Aerith was going to say when she saw Sora’s face after–

He woke abruptly from his dream, but the syrupy sweet smell remained. He stretched to sit up. He was on his couch. The sun streamed in through the curtains of his living room’s balcony screen door. Sora’s socks were in a crumpled heap on the floor by his ratty recliner and smoke was coming out of the kitchen.

The spot he’d left his phone to charge over night was vacant.

“Where’s….” he murmured to himself. He rose from the couch, began searching under the couch cushions.

“What are you doing?”

Riku whipped around, startled at the sudden inquiry, and there was Sora, leaning half way out of the kitchen with a spatula in his hand. “Fuck, you scared me,” Riku laughed lightly. “Can’t find my phone.”

“It’s over here.” He directed his head to his left into the dining room and there it was, sitting innocently on the dining room table. “Calm down, it’s only seven.”

“What happened to my alarm?” Riku asked, legs in long-gated motion to retrieve his phone and check if it had shut off in the night again.

“Chill, I turned it off,” Sora answered, turning back to the pancakes Riku could see him making. The smoke was emitted by bacon and eggs frying over separate burners. “Thought this would be a nicer way to wake up.”

The brunet stood in his kitchen, wearing his clothes, in his apartment, trying to do him favors and cook him breakfast. It was a much nicer way to wake up. “How’d you get into my phone?”

“Like it’s hard?” Sora scoffed, flipping a pancake. “I’ve known your passcode forever, it’s my birthday.”

Riku went rigid. “Thanks. For this. I have an exam in an hour and we all know I wasn’t going to eat anything.”

“Oh my God, Riku,” Sora sighed, glaring at him from the kitchen. “You gotta stop doing this to yourself. You’ve had like three hours of sleep and you have an exam? You knew you had an exam and you just drove an hour out to come get me in the middle of the night? Just because I called you? Riku.”

“Yeah,” Riku shrugged. “Hate to break it to you, but I can deal with failing a class, can’t deal with losing my best friend. I’d be fucked up forever if something happened to you.”

“Shut the fuck up, food’s done.” It was an order, but Riku could see the beginnings of a smile before he turned away towards the refrigerator.

Smiling, Riku fixed them both a plate, coordinating himself around Sora as he fixed them drinks. They brought their breakfast into the living room, Sora plopping down onto the couch while Riku channel surfed. “So, you’re feeling okay, right?”

“Believe it or not,” Sora started, voice lilting with sarcasm, “I’m fine.”

Sora’s lip, now that Riku could get a better look at it, had gone down tremendously in swelling, the only remainder of anything having happened being the slim cut down the middle and the deeper coloring. “Good,” Riku smiled.

“If you go get your notes, I’ll quiz you real fast,” said Sora, suddenly, words muffled around all the pancake in his mouth.

Riku let the brunet quiz him while he scarfed down the first home-cooked meal he’d eaten in two weeks and told himself to just take it the way it was, told himself that it wasn’t concerningly domestic.

“Hey,” Sora piped up, coming to stand near him in the doorway as he laced up his shoes. “Good luck, okay?” His arms were crossed protectively across his chest, face tilted upward to look at him with apologetic eyes.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Riku said, overconfident and content. He slung his back-pack over his shoulder, stepped backward into the hall, and plastered a smirk across his face. “I am well prepared and I’ll tell you about it when I get back, Lucy.”

“If you don’t _shut the fuck_ –”

*

He and Roxas had the same eight a.m. class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, meaning Riku got to look forward to seeing a less pleasant version of Sora at least three times a week, every week until December.

Also that he would be sitting right there in the desk ahead of him while he sat this exam.

“I hear Sora’s back in town,” Roxas drawled, turning in his seat as Riku dropped into the seat behind him. Roxas pushed his glasses up his slender nose, and leaned his face onto his palm after intrusively dropping his elbow onto Riku’s personal desk.

“Yeah, what of it?” Riku kept his voice level and clean, boring so Roxas couldn’t get anything out of it. Not that it would stop him.

“He texted me last night after Seifer flipped out,” Roxas continued, pretentious and knowing as he flicked blond, spiky hair off his forehead. “Said you were on your way to get him, so I didn’t have to worry. Of course this was three this morning,” the blond shrugged, feigning indifference.

“What’s your point?”

“And I thought,” Roxas continued theatrically, “‘did he forget about the exam today?’ Because no one in their right mind would do that on what little amount of sleep we get every other night.”

“Well, wouldn’t you?” Riku glared. “Wouldn’t you go get him?”

“Of course, no question,” the blond nodded, still entirely too smug, “But then again, I’m _hardly_ in my right mind, right?”

Riku groaned, deep and rough. “Just put an end to this, _what do you want_?”

“Okay, answer me this,” Roxas grinned, an air of finality in his tone. “You gave him your bed right? And you slept on the couch?” A small laugh burst forth. “Did it work? Did you never making a move ever wind up magically making him tell you he loves you, too?”

“Alright, I’ve had enough,” Riku murmured, coincidentally right as their professor entered the room. “Come on, I’m exhausted and I just want to pass this goddamn exam, please take it easy on me _just this once_.”

“Sure, sure,” Roxas sputtered, settling his laughter as their professor approached the whiteboard. “I understand. Gotta get out of here quick, make it home to Sora, tell him all about it.”

Riku ducked his head, hiding the heat of his face. “Roxas, come on, I’m _begging_.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” the blond crowed, laughter finally died down. He turned in his seat, leaned back far enough to still be a nuisance in Riku’s personal bubble. “You better take good care of him.”

*

When Roxas was edging on eighteen, it was finals month. No one had more incentive to do exceedingly well on them than he did. Axel had already been at DIU for two years, and though it was obvious that neither of them had a problem with the age gap, it was equally apparent that they did have an issue with the distance.

Their relationship – when it officially started in the middle of freshman year – was an interesting spectacle to behold. Axel was eighteen and a pyromaniac. He smoked back behind the school and had a car. Roxas was only just pushing fifteen, but he was more like Axel than anyone else they knew. Everything Axel did at eighteen, fourteen-year-old Roxas had been doing for years.

No one had worked harder for that relationship than Roxas, Axel, typically being wary of Roxas who was textbook jail bait. Roxas had sworn them all to secrecy. Goody-two-shoes Sora had nearly blabbed it all to his parents an innumerable amount of times before the first month was out. But by sophomore year, with Axel a different world away and their relationship still strong, it became apparent that they had something together.

Not that it made any difference to Seifer, who had been chasing after Roxas since their freshman year. He always made time to pester the blond between significant others, but somewhere between his reverent words of: “You know Axel’s gonna meet someone in college right?” and “Long distance relationships literally never work,” and worst of all: “Pics or it didn’t happen,” he finally got the hint.

Roxas was happy with Axel. It had been three years, they were doing just fine, and in a few short months, they were going to be together again. Then….

Sora’s smile turned sly.

Sora who was only two months older than Roxas. Sora who was the brunet version of Roxas, especially lately. Sora who was funny, and witty, and charming; who had been the “good twin” only until very recently.

Sora who was single.

Sora who was willing.

Sora who had something to prove.

And Riku had missed his chance.

*

“Your cousin’s an asshole,” Riku proclaimed, shutting the front door behind himself. It was honestly an understatement as well as the start to most conversations Riku had with Sora.

Choppy laughter echoed down the hallway from what Riku resumed to be his room. “Get over your twenty-year feud already!” Riku tossed his backpack into the living room as Sora sauntered down the hallway. “He told me to make sure I thanked you properly for going to get me, just now–” he held up his phone as evidence “–so thanks, Riku.”

That asshole. “I hate Roxas.”

“Jesus, what happened this time?” the brunette smirked. He lunged for the remote on his way to the couch.

“He’s just _smug_ ,” Riku huffed.

“Really? That’s it?”

“Dude, you know it’s not.” Riku joined his friend on the couch, sitting on the other end. “But let’s save that for another time.”

“Sure,” Sora said with the kind of inflection that suggested that that other time could be any moment now, and he wasn’t exactly wrong. “So how was your exam?”

Remembering Roxas and the comment he made about rushing back home to talk to Sora about it, he grimaced. And yet: “I told you, I had it. I even finished before Roxas did, so there’s that.”

“Good. That makes me feel better.”

Riku snorted. “God, were you gonna blame yourself if I didn’t do well?”

“It’d be kind of hard not to.”

“Amazing,” Riku smiled, hoping his face wasn’t portraying just how endearing he found Sora to be. “Listen, if I failed, it doesn’t work like that for me. It’s more like, I failed because I didn’t study enough, or I had text anxiety. Not because I was well prepared, but had an emergency and suddenly forgot everything.”

“Well, sure, but _still_.”

“Don’t worry about it. Really. You’ve only ever been good for me.”

A flustered Sora was possibly Riku’s favorite thing to see. “You can’t just _say_ shit like that.”

He liked to think, he liked to _hope_ , that if Seifer hadn’t swooped in saying exactly everything Sora had wanted to hear, that things could have been drastically different. It wasn’t his place to think things like that, wasn’t his right, but every time Sora fell back into his life he tortured himself.

“Just being honest,” Riku shrugged, albeit a little dishonestly.

And Sora looked at him like he couldn’t be real. Like he was trying to read him. Like if he looked hard enough, drew him deeper and deeper into endless cerulean eyes, that Riku might unravel. Sometimes, Sora looked at him like he _knew_.

But that didn’t matter. Right now, Seifer did. “Speaking of being honest, you know we gotta talk about this, right?”

Sora sighed, utterly defeated, it seemed. “Yeah. Let’s hear it.”

Alright, then. Riku was going to jump right in. “You could just stay here, if you want.”

A diminutive smile. “You say that every time.”

“I mean it every time,” Riku insisted.

“I’m not a quitter, Riku. I can’t just leave.”

Yeah that was one thing about sly-smile Sora. He didn’t quit, he never gave in, when he was angry, you felt his wrath for eons, and he never abandoned something he started. Even if it was physically hurting him. “Okay,” Riku sighed, “I understand that, but even so, what would it take?”

“A really, really good reason.” Sora’s scowl became a resigned frown. “Just trust me. I’ll be fine. This is my mess, I’ll clean it up, myself.”

“You keep saying that, but we keep ending up here. Just, please think about it? Stay here again tonight and think about it. He’s not respecting your strength by throwing his temper tantrums at you, he’s taking it out on you and he’s taking you for granted.”

“Everyone else out there, treats me like this fragile _thing_ ,” Sora said defensively, for arguably the thousandth time. “Like a piece of antique furniture you can’t touch, only look at. How am I supposed to spend my life with someone like that? At least Seifer’s not afraid of me.”

Riku felt it like a personal attack, but masked it by glaring harder. “If he does this to you again, I’ll team up with Roxas and Axel, and we’re going to kill him and Axel will burn his house to the ground.”

Sora snorted, “You say _that_ every time.”

“Does it not bother you that there’s an ‘every time?’”

“Of course it does,” the brunet murmured, soft and withdrawn as he dropped his gaze.

“Listen, just stay another night and think it over? I know you think you have to be, but you’re not stuck, okay?”

Sora nodded. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”

*

Sora had always been a tumble down child.

From the time they were small children, he’d had a flair for the theatrics, whether it be throwing himself down into the sand on the beach and coughing up rocks to get a giggle out of Kairi, or pretending to drown in the ocean and getting himself grounded by Aerith.

When they entered middle school, he tamed himself, but only slightly. Slight bumps to the shoulder sent him spiraling into the lockers. Losing his footing as he walked through the hallways was definitely going to send him crashing to the ground, and best believe his books were going to scatter all across the floor.

When they entered high school, papercuts had the most dramatic backstory ever heard. In drama class, he fell off the stage at least once a week. He got scraped up every time they played basketball in gym; nearly got himself concussed in just about every game of volleyball. In woodshop, Riku kept a serious eye on him to make sure he didn’t actually saw off his damn hand.

When they entered their freshman year of college, tumble-down Sora had been long gone, welcoming in his place, the rise of sly-smile Sora, who made dramatically less of a spectacle of himself. By then, he had been casually dating Seifer for around four months and it was as disgusting then as it was in the beginning, but Sora.

He seemed happy, then. Riku couldn’t attest to that.

He showed up to Kairi’s home on Christmas break a few months later with a cut over his eyebrow and scraped up knees. It wasn’t alarming then. Kairi had rolled her eyes, tossed out: “And here I thought we weren’t so clumsy anymore. What did you do to yourself after such a long clean streak?”

And Sora had grinned, just a hint of sunny-smile Sora, before he was back to smirking around a cigarette. “You _know_ I’ve got a story.” And that wasn’t the last of them. It picked back up again, not so much the theatrics as the remaining injuries that didn’t seem so bad when Sora smiled and explained the ridiculous way they got there.

By their sophomore year in college, it was obvious. Sora had moved with Seifer into an apartment even further away than he had been initially just staying in the dorms. Sora had just about dropped off the planet, barely responding to messages or phone calls. They only saw the brunet on the holidays and he dropped regular contact with just about anyone who wasn’t Roxas or Riku.

By their junior year, it was painful enough for Riku to risk Sora’s wrath by butting in.

“You could just stay with me, if you want. You wouldn’t even have to help pay rent or anything. My parents – they pay for my place anyway and I pay for everything in the apartment. You could just _live_ there.” With me.

Frown deepening, Sora shook his head. “That would be nice sure, but kind of juvenile, right?”

“How’s it juvenile to stay with your best friend to get away from a boyfriend that treats you like shit?” Riku challenged. He braced himself for the backlash that was sure to come just from the fact that this was the first time any of them had _said_ it.

“He doesn’t treat me like shit,” Sora had growled out, sure to keep his voice low since Riku’s dad was sleeping just down the hall. “I wouldn’t just _let_ someone treat me like shit, asshole. He treats me like I can handle anger – like I’m not the fucking fragile sunshine boy from Destiny Islands.”

Riku had scoffed, rolling his eyes in disbelief towards his old, cramped bedroom ceiling. “You’re glorifying abuse right now is what you’re doing.”

“Riku, just – _stop_! Okay? It’s my relationship and I know what I’m doing! I know what I can handle! I’m not a fucking child and he’s not going to break me!”

Riku had looked hard and pleadingly into Sora’s eyes. He could see the Christmas lights of his small tree glimmering in his irises and he was struck with such a sense of _home_ , as he sat atop old Star Wars bedsheets. He was struck with a sense of youth and innocence and how Sora had been nothing like this. “Sora you know that’s not what this is about.”

“Well, then what _is_ it about?” Sora demanded, dropped frustrated hands from his hair onto Leia’s space buns and Darth Vader’s light saber. “Why do you care so much?”

Jaw frozen in place, Riku glared, sure this time, that Sora _knew_. It shouldn’t matter why he cared, only that he did, and by extension, how _much_ he did. Sora should listen to him just for that. Sora should… why couldn’t he _want_ to get out? Why couldn’t he want to escape? He had imagined a thousand ways to come clean, but none like this. He stayed silent.

Sora scoffed, eyes landing themselves on the ceiling for a moment as if in a desperate prayer. “ _Amazing_ ,” he spat. Then he left.

*

There was a feather-light warmth lingering over his face. In his dream, it was his mom, kissing his forehead when he was sick as a kid. His dream progressed as he started to smell smoke. Something hit the coffee table. Something bumped the couch. “Sora?”

“ _Fuck_.”

There he was, a blurry outline looming over him as Riku sat up against the armrest of his couch. He rubbed roughly at his eyes and pushed his blanket off. “What are you doing?” He yawned out. Sora was completely dressed, wearing his shoes and one of Riku’s hoodies. He froze. “Where are you going?”

Sora winced, fidgeting as he lowered himself cautiously onto the coffee table. “You know I have to go back.”

“I thought we talked about this.” Just a few hours ago, Sora had promised to at least think about it. Riku was sure he’d had Sora’s assurance that he at least had him until morning, that he could possibly dissuade him from leaving this time. His phone read four in the morning. “Come on it hasn’t even been the full night!”

His entire head moved in the motion it took to roll his eyes. He levelled Riku a glare. “Riku, don’t. You have class in the morning. I already fucked up your sleep last night.  Don’t worry about me.”

“What the fuck do you mean don’t worry about you?”

“I mean _don’t worry about me_ ,” Sora snapped. “Listen I’ll be fine. I’m not walking into my death.” Riku scoffed, moved to push himself off the couch, but Sora’s hand became a barrier against his chest. “I’m tough. I can take care of myself.”

It was pointless, Riku knew full well, to protest when Sora looked like this. Like these would be his final words if they had to be. Like he would fight Riku down onto his knees if that was what it was going to take. Like he would hate Riku forever if he kept going. He stopped straining against Sora’s hand. “When am I gonna see you again?”

“Riku.” The brunet’s voice was softer, liquid topaz falling over the hard stoniness of Riku’s disappointment. “I’m gonna really try to come back home more often.”

“Yeah, you do that. _Try_.”

“No really!” Sora insisted, eyes wide with conviction and an honesty Riku hardly ever saw there anymore. “I hate being away from you.”

“Dude.” Maybe if he left it at that, Sora would stop looking at him that way. Maybe if he sounded disinterested, he wouldn’t betray himself with his tired, tired brain and tell Sora everything. Maybe the sooner he shut up, the sooner Sora would leave. Maybe he’d hate himself either way.

“That’s it?” Sora edged. “You’re not going to fight me anymore?”

Riku would never stop fighting for him. He just knew by now that there were different levels to the war. “You were sneaking out,” Riku stated. “Did you call a cab?”

“No, I’m gonna hop the bus.”

“Don’t get on a bus at this time of night,” Riku implored. “Let me take you,” he offered reluctantly. It was possible that once they got on the road together, Riku could still talk him out of it. Sora liked car rides and Riku could get poetic.

“No, man,” Sora said patiently. “Get some fucking rest and _don’t worry about me_.”

“You keep saying that,” Riku scoffed. When he moved to rise from the couch this time, Sora didn’t stop him. He kept his backpack by the front door and his wallet buried deep inside under all the books and trash. “Here,” he murmured, placing three crisp twenty dollar bills into his hand, wary of the long, thin scar. “It’s not much, but it’ll help,” he explained. “Call a cab.”

“I don’t want this.”

“Did I ask?”

Sora smiled, small and genuine and shy. He looked toward the front door. “You never do.”

It was important, despite his every sense of reasoning, not to seem clingy with Sora. It was important to show trust even if Sora made bad decisions, even if they were just going to end up right back here in a few weeks because more important than anything Sora could do, was making Sora know that Riku was always going to be there. That Riku wouldn’t ever cage him in like Seifer did.

As casually as he was able, he let his television play before him as Sora called a cab from his room. It was possible that he was also calling Seifer, but he was no better than said abuser if he demanded to know.

When Sora entered slowly back into the living room, he looked conflicted. Riku knew that look. He saw it every time Sora was about to leave him, but he never said anything about it, never pressed it. If he did, then he’d have to confront that largely selfish part of himself that _longed_ to see Sora reluctant to leave him.

He stood by the door. Riku stayed pressed to the couch. “I – thanks, Riku. For being my best friend.”

Which was honestly Riku’s least favorite thing to hear as well as his most important job. He thought of Seifer and felt his joints tense as he pictured every type of warm and welcoming reception Sora could have waiting for him back home. “As your best friend, you know what I want to say.”

“Then don’t say it, asshole.” Sora smirked, but there was still a small threat there. “It wouldn’t stop me leaving.”

“I know that,” Riku sighed, resigned. “Just please be… careful. And god, don’t fucking worry about bothering me, dick. Or Kairi.” Sora had the decency to look slightly guilty. “You have to tell Roxas where you are. I know you know that, but he’s even more of an asshole when he’s worried about you and I have to deal with it.”

“I know,” Sora chuckled, guiltier.

“I really fucking wish you wouldn’t go.”

There was that look again, deep, endless cerulean eyes saying everything his mouth never could. “Later, Riku.”

Riku sighed, never moved his gaze from Sora’s. “Later.”

He hated it every time when his front door shut behind Sora, leaving them closed off and separate in two different worlds.

He made himself sleep the next two hours, anything to stop the anxiety of it all. He woke up to his alarm and instantly thought of pancakes and Sora in his clothes. On his kitchen counter right beside his energy drinks, sat a neatly folded wad of bills and he furiously reached for his phone. “ _You’re an asshole_.”

He received a response in less than a minute. “ _Sorry bout it. I’ll see you soon_ , _promise_.”

Unfortunately seeing Sora these days only ever meant that he was in trouble. That ever growing selfish part of himself couldn’t bring himself to mind the circumstances when it came down to it.

It was the same part of himself that cared more about Sora not hating him than trying to force him into anything even safety, if Sora didn’t want it himself. The same part of himself that got so comfortable so quickly the moment he had Sora back in his vicinity no matter how short-lived that time was guaranteed to be.

Groaning to himself in his misery, he dropped the sixty dollars into his savings – a jar sitting half-full on his bedside table, purely funded by Sora refusing his help.

*

When they were in the sixth grade, Sora and Roxas became blood brothers.

Riku hadn’t been there for it, hadn’t even known about it until the next day when Sora came to school with a bandage wrapped all the way around his palm, telling him that he couldn’t hang out after school that day because he was grounded.

“What the hell _happened_?” Riku had squawked. Puberty was doing a number on his voice and Sora had been good enough not to tease him. Too much.

Roxas, on the other hand. “We’re blood brothers now,” he informed Riku in the same cracked inflection on his way passed them to his classroom, bandaged hand held high in the air as he erected his middle finger.

“It was Roxas’ idea,” Sora explained, expression sheepish at Riku’s flustered cheeks.

“Well, _yeah_.” It was stupid. _Yeah_.

“He was just trying to help me,” Sora continued, getting defensive the same way he did every time Riku got that look on his face about Roxas. “I was lookin’ at old pictures of Dad and Cloud again when they were kids and you know, wishing I had siblings. Dad says him and Cloud got into trouble all the time when they were kids and that me and Roxas are a lot like they were.”

Roxas and Sora had always regarded the other as a brother. They looked just alike and spent just as much time together as Sora did with Riku. Baby pictures were positively inconclusive without the eyes of either Aerith or Tifa since Roxas didn’t start turning blond until he was around five.

“This was bound to happen,” Riku commented. Not that he had particularly seen it coming, but now that it had happened, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t.

“Five stitches,” Sora revealed, a bit of a braggart’s smile curving his face. “Six for him. Dad was pissed and Cloud was gonna strangle Roxas. Tifa screamed at us all the way to the hospital and Roxas’ bedroom carpet is never gonna be the same. I think we’d be grounded forever if Roxas hadn’t reminded Dad and Cloud about the time they tried to tattoo each other when they were kids.”

Sora’s grin was infectious and Riku laughed, glad Sora could at least see the humor in how dumb they were. “What did you do, exactly? I’ve never heard of that going so wrong.”

“I took Cloud’s pocket knife,” Sora divulged proudly. Probably because if he were anyone else, he wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale. “We thought it’d be best if we didn’t warn each other when we did it, so when I did it, Roxas jumped and it went jagged and we really should have stopped there, but we didn’t, and I jumped, too, and it went jagged. And then Mom walked in.”

“Iconic.”

Sora nodded, grinning wider the more impressed Riku looked.

“How long are you grounded for?”

“Two weeks,” Sora sighed fondly.

“You know, you’re taking it really well,” Riku pointed out, noting that the smile never once left Sora’s face.

“Yeah,” Sora said slowly, like he was only just noticing. “I don’t know. I just guess in a weird way, it was worth it. At any point, Roxas could have said to me ‘we share blood already, idiot, we’re cousins,’ but he was the one who suggested it ‘cause it’s different, you know? I mean, he let me stab him in the hand and if that’s not a brother, I don’t know what is.”

He would later understand that it was entirely his jealousy that made him say: “Well, guess it’s a good thing you’ve got _someone_ you can count on,” then slap his bandaged palm in a sadistic high-five.

*

Roxas glared at him when he made it into class. He didn’t pester him once throughout the lecture. It wasn’t all that difficult to figure out why. He all but shoved past Riku after class on the way out, had made it down the hall in record time before Riku was able to catch him.

“You need something, Riku?” he droned, walking faster.

“Well, you’re obviously mad at me,” Riku huffed, too tired, too out of shape for this.

“I’m always mad at you, asshat, that’s why we’re not friends.”

Groaning, Riku forced a burst of energy that landed him in front of Roxas. “Be that as it may,” he breathed out roughly, as Roxas rolled his eyes at the inconvenience of being barricaded, “we’re kind of stuck together because we both care about Sora.”

Which seemed to be the answer here, because Roxas huffed, glare turning deadly as icy eyes narrowed. “You let him go. _Again_.”

“What?”

“Every time he comes to you, you have this… _golden_ opportunity! I would think, with how fucking over the moon about him you are, that you’d be jumping left and right to keep him with you, and yet, he stays with you and then a few days later, you just let him leave!”

“Well, what the hell am I _supposed_ to do?” Riku snapped, loud and utterly affronted. “Tie him to the bed?!” The blond shrank down, eyebrows furrowing in guilt now, rather than anger.

“Do you ever think,” Roxas ventured cautiously, “that this whole Seifer thing isn’t just some _phase_ that Sora’s going through? And we’re just standing by watching him fuck up his life?”

“Yeah that becomes more evident every time this happens,” Riku muttered. Though it made him feel slightly better that he hadn’t been the only one to excuse Sora’s behavior over the years, it didn’t lessen the guilt. Because in all seriousness, how far would Sora go just to prove some point no one else knew the meaning of? This wasn’t a phase Sora had become extremely committed to. This was a detrimental life decision that none of his friends had stopped him making, thinking it was simply something he needed to get out of his system. Thinking that it was something that couldn’t truly be as bad as they had feared.

“We have to do something,” Roxas commented, shortly, decisively.

“Oh yeah, and what would that be?” Riku snapped.

“I don’t know! A fucking intervention for all I care; _I don’t know_! Just _something_!” His outburst shocked the both of them. Embarrassed at his display of emotion – in front of Riku, no less – Roxas dropped his gaze, though it remained angry. He fidgeted from foot to foot and Riku saw him absently trace his left thumb down the center of his right palm.

“Uh,” Riku cleared his throat, “an intervention, then. That could work.”

Roxas rolled his eyes, huffed out a breath, but an accomplished smirk broke out none the less. “Yeah? We could call Kairi.”

“No better ideas at the moment.”

“Cool. Ask him when he can come back down.”

“Actually, maybe you can do that,” Riku decided quickly.

“Why can’t you?” Roxas asked, leering up at him a moment before he sighed, annoyed and so very vexed. “Of course, you’re fighting. I’ll fucking handle it since I have to do everything around here, fuck.”

*

 _Fighting_ was a tricky word to describe it, because in order to actively be in a fight, one had to let the other know they were upset in the first place. Riku had always been bad, abysmal even, at that part.

He had the thought over the years, of course, that if he were to possibly let Sora know how all this was affecting him, then he might take his concern more seriously. But that thought was always beat out by the realization that Sora was going through enough as it was and being petty on purpose wasn’t going to help either of them.

So he dealt with it.

Quietly, ineffectively, and alone.

Usually.

“Sora says he can come and hang with me and Axel this weekend. You’re going to be there. And for once in your miserable life, you’re going to be honest with him.”

“Oh my God, wha.”

So Roxas repeated himself, mouth quirking up at the sides in amusement at getting Riku so flustered.

And Riku said, “Um. _No_.”

“If you don’t,” Axel chimed in, muffled around the entire half sandwich in his mouth, “then we’re just going to keep ending up back here.”

“What do you know?” Riku bristled, defensive for reasons out of his reach. “He made this decision and it had nothing to do with me or what I felt or what I thought…. Why are you acting as if me saying anything has any sway over what he might do?” He let his gaze jump back and forth from Axel’s stare, green, the color of mischief, and Roxas’ icy glare.

“ _Just_ ,” Roxas started, unable to keep the bite out his voice until he heard it. He took a deep breath, tried again. “Just do it. Okay?”

“But,” Riku shook his head, trying to understand their point, or at least figure out how to make it click for them that he couldn’t fix this on his own. He couldn’t be the one to fix this. He wasn’t anyone special, he was just _Riku_. “You would have so much more sway over this than me, Roxas,” Riku tried again. “You could–”

“I could,” Roxas nodded, a knowing look upon his face, “but I won’t. I really think it should be you.”

Riku wasn’t dumb. He knew exactly what Roxas was getting at, but in actuality, Riku’s sad, endless feelings for his best friend weren’t exactly something he wanted to place as a wager over his best friend’s actual safety. “Fuck, if you could, like, _stop_ being so _cryptic_ –”

Axel and Roxas shared a look, then looked back to him, deadpan.

“Look,” Roxas huffed before Riku had time to try and decipher _that_. “I’m not saying you have to broadcast your gross, dirty feelings aloud to him. Especially since me and Axel are gonna be there, and because honestly, that’s kinda manipulative. I’m just saying, maybe this once, you let him know you give a shit?”

“He knows I care,” Riku snapped.

“Does he, though?” Roxas challenged, voice going high in false wonder. “You hide everything you ever feel deep, deep down under approximately twenty-five layers of angst and broody action hero.”

“Says _you_?!” Riku scoffed. “ _Says you_?!” He repeated, just because he couldn’t believe it.

“I think the fact that Rox said it should make it hit harder for you,” Axel laughed, soft and appreciative as he turned to his boyfriend. “Listen, it’s not hard, okay? We sit him down. We tell him how this affects us. I’m honest, Roxas is honest, and you, for once, are honest. Alright?”

“Well, when you put it like _that_ ,” Riku rolled his eyes, because it wasn’t going to be like that. It was going to be a shit show.

*

When Riku was fifteen, his parents got divorced.

He was just old enough to know that it wasn’t his fault, but still young enough that it didn’t matter. The court hearing had been awful, but the judge saw fit that he stay with his father. It was also the year Sora got his braces and his smile got so much wider, thus triggering the Strangely Specific Sexual Awakening of Riku Misake. He decided it was only slightly less stressful to focus on that rather than the shocking, depressing downturn his life was taking.

Of course, upon hearing the news, all Sora wanted to do was spend time with him. It predictably sent him into a devastating spiral of conflicting, and very, very confusing emotions about his wants and needs. Aerith and Leon almost never went home. Aerith had always sort of mothered Riku before, but now, seeing him so sad and Sora not much better, it only got worse. Even Kairi had become a bit more nurturing with him.

He saw his mom all the time. It was a small town, he could walk himself to his mom’s new place, but it wasn’t the same. His parents had tried to explain again and again why this was happening, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it.

It didn’t stop them saying it.

Sometimes things just don’t work out, had been the gist of it. To which, he’d inquired, flustered and furious: “What do you mean things just ‘ _didn’t work out_?’ You’re my-my _parents_. You’re supposed to,” But he didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Try harder, maybe. Love him enough to _make_ it work. Not tear this family apart. Keep his worldview from _fracturing_ this deeply.

His mom was broken, he could tell, but slowly moving on. When he’d first met Tom, he was so angry he didn’t speak to her for eight months. She kept saying she was sorry. She meant it, he could tell, but it was bitter and fell silent on his ears.

His dad was devastated – devastated in a way that made Riku realize that he wasn’t the only one really, truly hurting. It bonded them together and Riku’s father had tried again to explain it, to try and put Riku at ease, but everything he said for Riku’s benefit was also for his own. Riku had always been a thinker and the divorce became another thing for him to dissect and try to find the meaning behind.

“Not everything means something, Riku,” his father had said, eyes so pained, Riku thought he may have just been lying at the time. “I don’t want you thinking this had anything to do with you. I don’t want you to go around thinking that you could have done something because you didn’t break it. So you can’t fix it. Alright? Just know that we’re all going to be okay. Your mom’s going to be fine, and I’m going to be fine,” he explained it like a resolution. Then he looked him in the eye and forced a smile, small, but genuine. “And you are going to be happy again. I promise.”

Riku heard it as a life lesson on how not everything was supposed to be a life lesson, but the life lesson he took from it anyway was that nothing involving the people you loved worked unless everyone involved wanted the same thing.

*

Kairi sauntered in through Roxas and Axel’s front door, red hair and blue eyes bright and so, so welcomed that Riku couldn’t help but grin. “I haven’t seen you since the summer,” he greeted.

She threw herself into his arms. “Whose fault is that?”

Riku paused a beat, deciding to take the less awkward road. “Let’s just agree that we’ve been busy?”

“Agreed.”

Sora was meant to be there within the hour. Axel and Roxas were finishing up a movie when Riku had made it, and now that Kairi had arrived, and their movie was over, it was a little awkward. Riku had been inside Roxas and Axel’s apartment only once before and that had been years ago and only because he was trying to impress Sora by being the strongest one there to help Roxas move in.

It was strange, admittedly, to put aside their mutual disdain for the other to join forces for a common goal, but if Riku was going to be honest, with himself and only himself, he kind of liked not having to fight with Roxas all the time.

“So,” Kairi began, sitting beside Axel on the couch, “what if this doesn’t go well?”

“It probably won’t,” Riku said dully, to disguise his _stress_ about the whole thing.

“Then at least we’ll have done something,” Roxas said shortly. “It has to go well, okay? We really can’t afford for it not to, he’s gonna stay with that idiot. We kind of have to do everything we can.”

“We will, Rox,” Axel chimed in, the more worked up Roxas got.

“I’ll fucking resort to tears if I have to,” Roxas grumbled. Riku had a feeling that if he did, it wouldn’t be for show.

“He’s gonna hate us for this,” Riku vomited up.

Roxas snapped his attention to Riku then, glare furious and terrifying. “Hey, can you lighten the hell up over there, buttercup?”

“I’m _sorry_! I’m not–” the doorbell rang.

Four pairs of eyes darted to the front door, then back to each other, then all to Riku. Slowly, Roxas rose from his seat in the armchair and levelled Riku a pleading stare. “Look, I’m only gonna say this once, so listen up. You can fucking do this. You have to. If you care about him at all, _please_ do not be the one guy that can’t show he cares enough. You can do that any other time, just not now, okay?”

Riku heard it loud and clear, as he watched Roxas walk to the door. _Don’t drag us all down with your hang-ups, Riku_.

“I believe in you,” Roxas bit out with a finality that should have been sarcastic but fell short. It was apparent that somewhere in there, Roxas really did believe in him. At the very least, he believed in him about this.

Still, Roxas actually having some small shred of confidence in him freaked him out less than _this_.

Roxas opened the door and Riku turned to Kairi who didn’t say a word.

“Roxas,” Sora drawled from the doorway, “it’s been forever!”

Riku sighed to himself, prayed to someone up above that this wouldn’t be too bad and hoisted himself off the loveseat.

“What’s the plan of action today?” Sora walked around the corner into the living room, going still at the sight of Riku in Roxas’ living room of all places. “Riku,” he said slow and curious, then a lazy grin curved his face. “What the hell are you doing _here_?” He paused, thought about it harder as Axel rose from his seat on the couch. “No really,” he said, more seriously, more guarded. “What the hell are you _doing_ here?”

Kairi then scooted herself over on the couch so Sora could see her from behind Riku and his face completely closed up, body went rigid. Unbeknownst to Sora, Axel sat himself down on the floor in front of the front door to prevent any hasty escapes.

A look crossed Sora’s face that Riku recognized as the warning before a storm struck. “Jesus- _fuck_. Are my parents about the walk out of the bathroom?”

“Sora,” Roxas said gently. He reached to drop his hands onto Sora’s shoulders but he backed away. Roxas didn’t let the hurt stay on his face longer than two seconds. “We’re doing this because we care about you and I know this sucks, but this is the only thing we could think of that wasn’t just straight up kidnapping you and murdering your boyfriend.”

Sora scoffed. “I can’t believe you guys fucking thought this was necessary.”

“We’re worried,” Roxas huffed, hurt turning to anger. “I mean, I haven’t actually seen you in six months! We used to see each other every other day! You don’t even come home for Christmas anymore!”

“I was literally here last Christmas, Roxas, what the fuck?!”

“Yeah,” Roxas scoffed. “But you had to _sneak_ here, and you only saw Riku!”

Sora turned blazing eyes on Riku, then. “You told them that?!”

Riku bristled. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to! They just wanted to know you’re okay! I didn’t know you weren’t seeing anyone else!”

“No,” Sora seethed. “You told them I had to sneak out?”

“Well, you _did_!” Riku exclaimed, affronted.

“Riku!” Sora yelled, face going a little red. “ _Shut the fuck up_!”

“He has a point,” Kairi stated bravely, now standing beside Riku. “I know Seifer’s the reason you don’t talk to me anymore. He won’t let you.”

Sora looked shocked and unarmed by the sight of her, but he was stubborn none the less. “Seifer doesn’t get to _let_ me do anything,” Sora spat defensively. “I know you’ve probably all be sitting up talking about me for weeks like I’m in some kind of peril, but I’m not! I don’t need your help!”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Sora,” Roxas spat.

“You’re not even gonna listen?!” Sora yelled, looking around at all of them. “If you’d all just pull your heads out of your asses and realize that I’m not a dumb kid anymore, you’d realize you don’t know everything! I can take care of myself!”

“ _Can_ you?” Riku demanded. “So when you call me in the middle of the night because Seifer has become an actual _threat_ to your safety, is that taking care of yourself, Sora?! And when you go right back the next day, is _that_ taking care of yourself?!” Sora went silent. Blinking up at him, his expression was beginning to look hurt, but Riku was too far gone to care. “Is it?”

At that, the hurt on Sora’s face was gone, replaced by a tumultuous glare. “Fucking _sue_ me for _trusting_ you!”

“That’s bullshit, too,” Riku scoffed. He could feel Roxas’ eyes on him, everyone’s eyes on him, but for the love of God he couldn’t make himself _stop_. “Trusting me would be fucking finally admitting that you’re in a bad place and that you need help but that’s not what this is! _This_? This is killing me, Sora! I don’t mind helping you if you’re going to actually do something about your situation, but right now, you’re _not_ and I can’t take this anymore! My grades are suffering, I’m exhausted, I’m stressed _all the time_ and my anxiety is _spiking_ all because you insist on trying to _prove_ something to us!”

Again, Sora went silent, jerking back like Riku struck him. There was that subtle hurt look again, the one Riku felt immediate regret for putting there, but it was short-lived, overshadowed again, but by an even deeper rage.

It struck him that in this moment, he wasn’t being honest, he was being brutal.

“Trying to prove something,” Sora repeated, voice low like the calm before a storm. “That’s what you think? ‘Poor, goofy Sora, still trying to entertain us, but this time, it went wrong?’”

“What’s _that_ mean?” Kairi asked, confused and angry.

“That after all this time, no matter what I do, you guys are still going to think it’s about getting a reaction out of you!” Sora yelled, the hurt in his eyes mixing in with the anger, creating something that made Riku’s heart splinter in his chest. “Well, in case you guys all missed it, this has _nothing_ to do with you. With _any_ of you,” he reiterated, turning to glare at Riku. “I grew the fuck up, okay? I’m not ‘class-clown Sora’, anymore, okay? I chose to date Seifer because _he asked me,_ and I liked him and that’s how it is! It was _my_ decision, and _purely_ mine, for the entertainment and benefit of no one else, but my own! Got it?”

It all _clicked_. Sora’s smile turning sly, his forced expanded and provocative vocabulary, Leon’s stolen cigarettes, his sudden _lust_ for risk-taking and adventure and anything that could end _badly_ – so horribly, disastrously, _badly_ – but make them _notice_ him.

Sora did have something to prove. That much had been obvious since day one. Riku had known it, Kairi had known it, they had all known it. What they hadn’t known was that it wasn’t something he wanted to prove to the world.

It was just something he wanted to prove to them.

Riku all but deflated, the anger and rage zapping right out of him. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” he admitted.

“Yeah, I know,” Sora muttered bitterly, eyes trained on the ground after his outburst.

“Riku shouldn’t have said that thing about you trying to prove something to us,” Roxas offered, voice gentle, but eyes lethal and aimed right at Riku. “We’re sorry we made you feel like that. Really. But it doesn’t change the fact that we just want to help you and you won’t let us.”

“Well, I don’t _need_ your help,” Sora started, voice softer, but still defensive, as he ran his thumb down his palm, “but I do let you help me.”

“You don’t let us help you,” Roxas argued patiently, “you let _Riku_ help you.” At that, Sora went rigid, all shifting of body parts completely ceased. “Can you think why that might be?”

“Because Riku doesn’t interrogate me with stupid questions,” Sora snapped, head still lowered as he glared at the ground.

“About that,” Roxas hinted, looking to Riku. He nodded, expression as encouraging as he could make it as he gestured with his head in Sora’s direction. Riku shook his head, thinking purely of how he couldn’t stop yelling at him just moments ago, then of the possibility of how much worse he could make this if he opened his mouth again. Roxas didn’t care. “Riku kind of has something to say.”

At that, Sora finally lifted his gaze from the ground. He looked up at him, still a little angry, but now it was mixed with what must have been hope. Riku could remember the first time he thought to himself, _wow I wish Sora wouldn’t look at me_ , and it was right now.

And Sora waited while Riku quite literally floundered, willing the right words to come to him while begging the words in his brain – _please, please, please, I love you so much just listen to us, leave Seifer for me, please, how can you not see it on my face I love you so much_ – not to tumble out of his big, dumb mouth.

“Riku,” Roxas hinted again, eyes cold and harsh on him, “has something to _say_. With his mouth. Today. Now.”

But Riku couldn’t look away from Sora. Sora who was watching him with curiosity turned impatient. “Riku,” he prompted.

And he faltered, went impulsively right back to the defense mechanism engrained into the grooves of his brain. Deny and ignore. “I don’t,” he cleared his throat, eyes darting between Sora’s and the ground. “I don’t have anything to say besides what I always say.”

Roxas would have punched him right then if he could have, but Sora. His face, so full of hope and even anticipation then fell. Utterly and completely fell into an expression so flat Riku had never seen it on him. Then the anger was back full force and he scoffed his expression somehow both endlessly resigned and uncontrollably furious. Sora’s frustration flowed out and punched him in the gut and he groaned. “You never fucking _talk_ to me!”

 _That_ was more painful than anything physical Roxas could have done to him.

Sora glared all the way down the hall and Roxas took up the glaring as they all heard him slam the bathroom door. He had long since seen Axel sitting against the front door, a perfect intimidating, and pyromaniac barricade.

Axel chose then to pick himself up off the floor. “You know he’s sneaking out, right?”

Yeah, they knew.

Roxas levelled a glare at Riku so intense he braced himself for the punch he knew had to be coming, but never did. Instead, “The one fucking time I believe in you?”

 _Way to drag us all down with your hang-ups, Riku_.

*

“I’m going to fucking _kill_ you!” Roxas roared. “He’s going to go back, you know! He’s probably on his way back right now, you asshole! Oh my _God_ , why can’t you just – do you even care about him?! Really?!”

“Of course I care about him!” Riku screamed back, angry and disappointed and tired, so, so tired of being silent, of being guarded, of being chastised, of being _wrong_. “The actual problem is _how much I care about him_!”

“Well apparently not enough!” Roxas continued, arms flailing about as he utterly lost all control. “Not enough to finally just motherfucking _say_ something! Did you not see him?! All he wanted was for you to just say something, Riku, but yet again, you had to be Mr. Cool Guy and guess what that got you?! He fucking left! You let him go, yet a-motherfucking-gain!”

“I told you I can’t fucking tie him down! I can’t make him do anything! I can’t stop him from leaving if he wants to leave! Fuck, I just hope he can forgive me for betraying his trust like that, I’m not gonna fuck it all up and make it worse by trying to tell him he can’t leave!”

“I really don’t think that now, after everything you already fucked up, is the time to worry about having betrayed anyone’s trust!” Roxas bellowed.

“Well, I think we kind of _need_ him to trust us,” Riku retorted. “We especially need him to trust _me_ since you think he’s most likely to listen to me! Even if he didn’t tell me that I was the only one he was talking to about this stuff and I just outed him in front of everyone he cares about!”

“And what do you think _that_ means?!”

“Roxas,” Kairi said gently, coming to stand between them. “I think he gets it.” Roxas let out another frustrated shout, but relented, none the less. She turned to Riku then, regarding him with concern and a dawning realization. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell that was just now, but there is clearly something going on between the two of you and if you don’t want to lose him for good, you need to fucking talk to him and handle this.”

“Not today,” Axel chimed in from beside Roxas, holding his hand in a death grip as if he might take a swing at Riku if he let go. “You need to let him cool off for now, but definitely tomorrow, and definitely in private.”

Definitely tomorrow, and definitely in private, being the key words that managed to convince Sora to even give him the time of day. The text he received in response was merely a chilly “ _fine_ ,” but Riku would take it.

Sora was waiting on the secluded bench he had specified when Riku made it to Hooks Park. He couldn’t stop the smile of relief spreading across his face at the sight of him still put together in one piece. “Sora,” he started, happy to see him here willing to talk to him. “You’re okay.”

Sora nodded, something grateful passing over his expression as Riku sat beside him on the bench. “Definitely okay.”

Sora was stiff in posture, but his expression was warm as he faced him, eyes blue and open, smile diminutive, but well intentioned. Riku felt himself relaxing.

“Sorry,” the boys said at the same time. Sora made to apologize again, but obdurately, Riku beat him to it.

“No, shut up, let me say something.” Snorting, Sora nodded, so Riku continued, “I’m really sorry about putting you through that. It was Roxas’ idea. We all agreed because we care a lot about you. _I_ care a lot about you, okay? Seeing how Seifer treats you all the time hurts me, too. Not just in a – a morality type of way, I mean sure it’s wrong and I hate him because he’s dick, but it’s – you’re really important to me. And the fact that Seifer could hurt someone I care so much about makes me see red.”

Sora’s small smile became a guilty grin, stifled only by his teeth biting down. His eyes widened in delighted surprise. “You’re being serious?”

“Yeah. I mean this is a serious conversation, and I seriously think you deserve better.”

“Thanks,” Sora said, slowly, shyly. “You know, I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry for making you guys this worried about me. I had something to prove to myself. I wanted to prove that I could… I don’t know. Handle someone like Seifer. I got tired of being a joke and Seifer never treated me like one and I noticed. He liked Roxas first, you know. He was a dick about it, but who wouldn’t like Roxas? Roxas is cool and confident and he does what he wants when he wants and I always wanted to be like that, but I wasn’t. I was the goofball. I made people laugh. I made sure everyone was having a good time and no one was feeling left out. I made myself a joke.” He sighed. “But the thing about that is when you make yourself a joke, you really become one.”

“Sora,” Riku sighed. A knowing smile on his face, he turned to face the brunet head-on, strangely fearless. “You were a class clown, yes, and you were funny, and you did make us laugh when we needed it, but you were never a joke. I’m sure our friends will agree with me, but as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t want you to be Roxas. If I wanted that, I would have been friends with Roxas, but I wasn’t. I’m friends with _you_. I wanted you to be you.”

Sora flustered, tried to say something, but went quiet, cleared his throat and powered on, though slightly flushed. “I’ve been thinking about my relationship with Seifer for a while now,” he explained pointedly. Riku felt a spike of pride the longer Sora wouldn’t look at him, the redder his face flushed. “I can’t believe I let myself get used to such an unhealthy thing.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Riku noted.

“It’s hard not to,” Sora argued gently. He glanced up at Riku, then darted his eyes away again. “I mean, I knew that he only liked me at first because Roxas wasn’t gonna give him the time of day, but I thought it wouldn’t take long for him to like me. It didn’t, he did like me, just… as long as I was more like him. And I was kind of miserable. Seifer is really mean. Not even just to me, he’s mean to everyone, about everyone. He has something to say about _everyone_ , and I told myself that me hating it was me being that dumb kid I didn’t want to be anymore, but I was just molding myself to be more like him.”

Finally, Sora looked up to him with sad blue eyes. Riku felt himself leaning further in before he could think about it. The brunet didn’t seem to notice.

“And that was only when we first got together. He didn’t start, you know…. We didn’t start fighting each other until last year. He’d get jealous,” Sora scoffed. “I was ‘too nice’ to the cashier at the store, or I shared notes in class with some guy he didn’t like and he’d go crazy when we got home.”

“What?” Riku glared. Riku realized then that Sora had never given him details before, just the scientific process of what exactly gave him which bruise.

“It’s… why we moved,” Sora admitted, sounding so, so ashamed that Riku wanted to pull him into his arms. “He said he wanted to have, like, a proper adult relationship and everything, and sure, not living in the dorms sounded nice, but he just didn’t trust me living in the dorms.”

“You’re the most trustworthy person I know.”

Again, Sora looked touched, then looked down at his hands in his lap. “At the time, I thought maybe he was right. Maybe I just didn’t realize what I was doing. But once we moved, that went away. And I started to fight back and that made things worse, but I wasn’t going to back down. The more stubborn I got, the more stubborn he got until he was just trying to hurt me. In one of our first really bad fights, he told me the real reason he dragged me all the way out here was because I’d be so far away from you.”

Something funny happened inside his chest that went up, and then _down, down,_ _down_. “Me?” Riku croaked. “Just me?”

Embarrassed, Sora’s eyes widened, “I mean, he wanted me away from all of you and he really wanted me away from my parents, but _God_ , you. He was always really jealous of you.”

He felt the urge, in his elation, in the soft look Sora was giving him, in the way his posture was curved in toward him, to deflect it all before it could go wrong. To deny that this had to mean anything and ignore what was making his heart beat so fast.

But he couldn’t. And the more he thought on it, the more he let himself have this, the more he let Sora have an effect on him, he found that he couldn’t even make himself.

He felt it in his throat building up like a scream would. He could say it now, he could say everything.

“Listen,” Sora said first. Riku sighed, let the air go. “Yesterday, I’m really sorry about screaming at you like that.”

Riku shook his head. “I think I deserved it. Sorry for betraying your trust like that.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” Sora gave a sort of helpless chuckle. “You didn’t know I hadn’t told anyone else. I didn’t you because I didn’t want you to know how secretive I had to be. I didn’t want you to tell me what I already knew and I knew you wouldn’t ask because you’re really good at respecting my space. But I should be honest about something.

“I kind of took advantage… of the fact that you gave me so much space. Roxas would have _never_ given me that much space and it took me an entire year to ward off Kairi, but you went so far out of your way to make me feel like I had a choice about things that I kind of came to rely on it. I appreciate it, really! But I relied on it and I called it even because I know there’s stuff you don’t tell me and I figured I could justify it if we were both hiding things.”

So he had noticed the space thing. And Riku found himself smiling that he had noticed it enough to genuinely appreciate it. Maybe he’d been too lenient about it, but if it had been the main thing that kept him talking to Riku long after he’d stopped talking to everyone else, then he didn’t really care.

However. “What do you mean, stuff I don’t tell you?” Riku asked, his chest doing that up-and-down thing again.

“Riku,” Sora started, a knowing smirk lifting his face. “I know you like the back of my hand. I know when you’ve got something to say, I know what that looks like, how your face gets. The problem–” the brunet’s brows furrowed then, his frustration subtle, but evident “–is that you’ve almost _always_ got something to say. I can see it, but the words never come out. Like, I don’t even think you know you’re doing it, but you give me this _look_ , and I don’t know what it means other than you really wanna say something, but then you _don’t_. You literally let me _leave_ before you’ll say something. You never talk to me.”

There it was, in his throat again.

He felt like this was the most eye contact they’d made in years, now that everything – almost everything – was finally out in the open and Riku wondered how he had been managing to keep down that he felt _this_.

To keep from Sora that he felt this. What was this if not huge, blinking sign to finally say something? To let the words in his brain tumble out of his big, dumb mouth?

“I’m gonna leave Seifer.”

“I – _oh_ ,” Riku caught himself at the start, then registered Sora’s words. “Holy shit, you are? Really?”

“Hell yeah,” Sora replied, more confidently, smile mirroring Riku’s. “I was miserable anyway. I’ve been miserable for years,” he said, like he was only just realizing. Like it was something he now deserved. “I’m gonna go,” he decided, smiling a little wider. “Do it now while I still feel like this.”

“ _Sora, that’s fucking awesome_!” Riku exclaimed, way too loud, way too enthusiastic, but way too overjoyed and relived to care. He stood when Sora did, the both of them smiling an awful lot for the impending demise of a four-year relationship. “Do you want me to stick around?”

“No, it’s really probably better if you don’t,” Sora decided quickly.

“Right,” Riku nodded sheepishly. “Jesus, I’m so fucking glad you’re gonna – _thank_ _fuck,_ I’m _so_ – what changed your mind after all these years? Please tell me it was the fucking intervention so I can tell Roxas and maybe he’ll stop hating me so much,” Riku cracked, his system buzzing with pure relief.

The frenzied look in Sora’s eyes fizzled out a little then, replaced with something more sincere and clear and honest. “You can tell him that, but actually, I don’t think it was,” the brunet admitted, smile going a little crooked. “I think it was you.”

“Me,” Riku murmured, excitement still there entirely, but dialed way back. “Just _me_.”

Sora nodded then, eyes going a little wide in embarrassment, he began to walk away, unable to fully turn himself away. “I – I’ll let you know how it goes.” Then his quick departure became more of an escape the faster he moved his legs, and Riku couldn’t bring himself back _down_.

He willed himself not to scream at the sky.

*

“Well whatever you said, good job.”

“What’s that mean?” Riku laughed into his phone later on that night. “Why are you calling me this late?”

“Because!” Kairi exclaimed, a smile evident in her voice. “Sora just called me and he finally talked to me!”

“He did?” Riku perked up. He shut his text book, knowing he wasn’t getting any real studying done anyway. “What did he say?”

“He _talked_ to me,” she stressed. “He explained everything that happened, he told me he was sorry and he wants to make it up to me, so we’re going out for coffee together this weekend.”

“That’s great,” Riku said, enthusiastically, because it was, and he was truly happy for her, but, “Anything… else?”

“Sora said he’s going to break up with Seifer,” Kairi announced, knowingly.

“ _Going_ to?” Riku murmured, feeling naïve as his chest went cold with disappointment and doubt.

“Yeah, isn’t that great?!” Kairi squealed. “He said he’s going to be home for Christmas this year for sure, so let’s have a Christmas party at my house okay? Like old times. We can make hot cocoa and open our presents early!”

“Oh, okay, Kairi,” Riku agreed, forcing enthusiasm into his voice for her sake. “Sounds fun.” Though this was beginning to feel familiar. It was beginning to feel like hurting all over again because Sora made promises he couldn’t keep.

*

When Riku was eighteen, he was going to do it. He was going to do it if it _fucking_ killed him.

Along all the lockers, classroom doors, and bulletin boards were fliers, reminding him that he couldn’t escape it, not if he wanted to keep his pride. If he didn’t go through with this, the fliers would only mock and mock him, and he repeated this mantra again and again to himself in his head until he knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

That was until he saw him, anyway, then he thought he might run.

There he was at his locker, loading his textbooks into his backpack, somehow magnetic and impossible to ignore as ever even though he was doing nothing extraordinary at all. He sighed and nodded to himself as he crossed the hallway, closing the distance between them. “Hey,” he greeted, leaning so casually against the locker beside his that he nearly slipped.

“Hey, Riku,” Sora greeted back, a little surprised by his presence, but clearly happy to see him. He slammed his locker shut then, zipping up his backpack and slinging it over one shoulder. He looked up at him with those blue eyes and that sly grin, that look that made his gut _clench_. “You coming over today to hang out? Or are you gonna be all responsible and study?” He smirked. Riku’s stomach flipped.

“I guess I don’t _have_ to be responsible today,” Riku shrugged, nervousness draining away. “On one condition.”

“Oh?” A coffee-colored brow raised in amusement as Sora slouched more against his locker. He looked up, teasingly at Riku in a way that had him subconsciously leaning forward. “This should be good.”

“Ha, yeah,” Riku laughed nervously. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Do you want to go – go to prom together? With me? We can just… hang out, it can be totally casual.” _Shoot me in the face_.

Sora’s face fell then, Riku’s heart from his throat right along with it. “Oh,” he uttered. He looked up at Riku with apologetic eyes, still alluring, but so, so painful. “Shit, Riku I wish you would have asked me sooner,” he sighed, looking guilty with a mixture of something else. “I _can’t_. I’m not even going to prom, someone asked me out. I have a date.”

Riku nodded in understanding, forcing a smile though his chest felt entirely empty. “Yeah, yeah, that’s cool, have fun.”

Sora had always been good at seeing right through him, though. “Riku, I would have gone with you. Really. It just wouldn’t be right to turn him down now, after I already said yes,” he explained, looking more and more regretful by the second. “You get it, right?”

“Yeah, it’s cool, I promise, have fun,” Riku replied, automatically.

“I’m sorry,” Sora winced.

“Don’t be sorry, really,” Riku insisted. “But uh… who is it?” Perhaps it was just Riku’s biased, biased opinion, but Sora wasn’t the kind of guy you just went out with because he was cute and available. Sora was the kind of guy who left marks, traces, reminders. He was the kind of guy who could consume you, keep you warm like a bonfire, but cover you completely with the smoke.

At Riku’s question, Sora’s expression turned sheepish. “Ah, it’s not important, I’m just giving him a chance. It might not even go all that well, you know. It’s just a stupid date.”

Sora was the kind of guy who could make anyone better, he’d been doing it for Riku their entire lives.

“Yeah.” Maybe it was best if Riku didn’t know.

*

He had class in six hours, but he sprung awake out of a dead sleep the second he heard Green Day’s _Brain Stew_.

His phone was in his hand before he opened his eyes. “Are you okay?” He mumbled, free hand already reaching around blindly across his nightstand for his keys. “Where are you?”

“I’m fine,” Sora whispered back, “I’m outside.”

“Huh?” Riku breathed out, sitting upright in his bed. “What do you mean outside, like did that asshole throw you out?” he demanded, feeling it all the while his anger over-came his resignation.

“No, dude, I’m outside your apartment, let me in.”

“Outside my–” dazed, he ended the call and shuffled out to his front door. Stupidly, without even checking through his peephole, he flung the door open and there he was, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a bruised cheek. Riku managed not to visibly _deflate_ at the sight of him like this – sad, broken, and right back where they had started. “You’re _here_.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Sora said slowly, gently pushing past him to get inside.

“You never just come here on your own,” Riku reasoned, still tired, still processing, “I pretty much have to beg you to tell me where you are.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here,” Sora answered, a blank stare on his face. “That okay?”

“Yeah, of course, just,” Riku faltered, “are _you_ okay?”

The question seemed to wake him up then, the blank, lifeless expression on his face slowly unraveling, becoming slightly panicked. “I don’t know,” he whispered in all honesty, for the first time. He dropped his backpack onto the floor.

“What the hell happened?” Riku demanded, alarmed that Sora wasn’t ordering him not to worry.

Sora shook his head, looking between Riku and the wall behind his head. “I – I – two hours on the _bus_ – because _Seifer_ –!” He shook his head again, locked his eyes on Riku’s. “I called Kairi and then I called my parents, and then I–! _He_ –!” Frustrated, Sora rolled his eyes and groaned, a hand snaking up to tug at his hair. “I’m not even _sad_!”

“Sora,” Riku tried cautiously, unsure if he should step closer or stay where he was. The more lost Sora began to look, Riku decided not to crowd him. “Should I call Roxas and Axel?”

Sora shook his head again and before Riku could ask what happened, he was off again. “I was just _talking_ and he _punched_ me!” He exclaimed, sounding shocked like he was only just grasping it.

“What?” Riku demanded, angry without thinking. He shuffled forward to inspect his cheek, but again, Sora shook his head, using his hands to speak now.

“And everything’s gonna be _different_ now,” he stressed, more to himself. “What am I going to _do_ now? I only have my laptop!”

“Sora–”

“Riku, _listen_ ,” Sora pleaded, “ _four years_ and I’m not even _sad_!” He scoffed then, as if just remembering something. “He told me you _threatened_ him at graduation!”

“What?” Riku asked, puzzled. It was coming back to him, though – Riku pulling Seifer aside in their black gowns and telling him that if he ever hurt Sora, he’d better run far away because he was coming with Roxas and Axel.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” Sora demanded, hands flying out at his sides.

“What?” Riku squawked. “You’re mad at _me_? It was graduation, I didn’t want to ruin it for you–”

“No, dumbass,” Sora spat, though a sad smile graced his face. “Why didn’t you ever just tell me how you felt about me?”

“I – you–” It scared the _shit_ out of Riku and he faltered, willing his brain to go back to making thoughts rather than blaring panicked danger sirens. “ _What–?_ You need to tell me what happened. Are you safe right now? Is Seifer gonna come looking for you any minute now?”

“No,” Sora shook his head, looking frustrated, yet relieved. “I’m safe now.” He sighed, looking pleadingly up at Riku, begging him to understand. “He was just… screaming and _yelling_ at me, but I couldn’t even hear him because I just kept _thinking_ about how all I really wanted was to go to prom with you,” Sora explained, like he thought it was ridiculous, but his eyes never left Riku’s.

Riku’s brain was flat lining.

“I broke up with my boyfriend of _four years_ today! And all I could think was that I should have gone to _prom_ with yo–!”

Every last one of his inhibitions was somewhere out in left field when he grabbed Sora around the waist, tilted his face up and kissed the breath out of him. Sora pressed back against him, kissing him back – _fuck, he’s kissing me back_ – his mouth open and pliant to him was doing something uncontrollable to his insides and he was never going to let him go again.

Sora’s arms were tight and warm and perfect around his shoulders, but his face was drawing away and Riku thought _no_. Sora laughed, husky and low against him before he realized he was leaning after him. “What?” Riku demanded impatiently, but he had no control over how dopey his face felt.

Sora laughed again. Riku pulled him closer. “If I didn’t know any better,” he drawled, smugly. “I’d think you had a crush on me, Riku.”

“I hate you,” Riku rolled his eyes, bumping Sora’s nose with his own, pushing his lips down onto Sora’s again for about three blissful seconds before Sora was pulling away again.

“I seriously bet you don’t,” Sora teased, grin wide as he tried to catch his breath. “So, Riku,” Sora managed, breathing hard against his neck, making Riku shiver, “how _do_ you feel about me?” Riku could see it in his eyes plain and clear: _Say it. Tell me_.

He thought he couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. “I love you,” he sighed, “ _so fucking much_ ,” Riku answered, proud and so, so happy to play this stupid game with him. “I am honestly so far gone for you I would do anything. You could tell me to jump off my balcony right now and I’d probably do it.”

Face flushed, and confident, and so fucking beautiful, the brunet shook his head as his eyes went dark. “Well, I think you’ll appreciate that that’s not what I want from you.” Sora released him slowly then, stepped around Riku toward the hall while Riku stood frozen. Sora turned back then, mouth going crooked at the sides along with a head tilt. “Coming?”

Immediately, he rushed after Sora to his room, grabbing onto his wrist just because he finally _could_. “This is crazy,” Riku murmured to himself.

“Aw man, wouldn’t it suck if you were dreaming?” Sora cracked, peeling off his shirt.

“Shut up,” Riku quipped, pushing him backward onto the bed.

Years spent longing for the chance to merely kiss the brunet long forgotten, Riku never took his lips off Sora. The brunet was warm like fire and all-consuming like smoke. Riku relished in the blue of Sora’s eyes, in all the different ways he could make him say his name. In his arms was finally the love of his life, in his ears an addictive mantra of Riku, Riku, _Riku_.

*

Then, there was a hand smacking him in the face. Followed by: “ _Agh_! Jesus! Holy _shit_! _Why_?!”

“Hm?” Riku murmured, still half asleep, too tired to move, too tired to open his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

“With _me_?!” Sora shrieked, sounding indignant – again, Riku wasn’t opening his eyes. “I can’t believe your alarm in the mornings, _to fucking wake you up_ , is those damn screaming goats?!” A moment later, the screaming stopped. “How have you not had a heart attack?!”

“I have–” a yawn tore up his throat “–eight a.m. classes. I won’t snooze if I’m scared shitless.”

“You don’t seem scared to me,” Sora mused. Riku felt the bed shift, then felt eyes on him. “Like at all.”

“’M too happy.”

Sora hummed in what was really a close-mouthed coo. Riku felt himself smile. “Well, it’s seven ’o’ five right now. You have to get up soon.”

Riku scoffed, “I’m not going to class today.” Instead, he reached out, grabbed Sora and dragged him against him. Sora hummed again. A moment later, he laughed softly, then just a little louder. Riku smiled at the sound, “What’s funny?”

“It’s just, you’re so eloquent.” He cleared his throat, said: “’I love you,’” then dropped his voice in a horrible imitation of Riku’s, but definitely captured the point, growled: “‘ _so fucking much_.’”

Riku retorted, raising his voice to a pitch that, in fact, sounded nothing like Sora. “ _I should have gone to prom with you_!”

Sora laughed fully now, playfully shoved him. “We could have been doing this for years, but you had to wait until _the day after_ Seifer asked me out to say something to me.”

“Well, you could have said something,” Riku mumbled.

“You’re the brave one out of the two of us!”

Riku scoffed. “That’s not true, Sora.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s really not,” Sora quipped. “Well, I was off, very bravely, trying to be someone else,” he joked, “What’s _your_ excuse?”

“Fuck, it was like, sophomore year when I knew the feeling wasn’t going away even though you were so goddamn _stupid_ –” he yelped when he felt Sora’s fist connect with his shoulder again, laughed at his indignant “ _hey_!” “But then junior year, you were so different, but not?” He yawned. “You were still Sora, but more mature, and like, kind of dangerous? You were, like, fuckin’… blooming and I didn’t want to prune you.” His tired brain caught up with him seconds later and he snorted. “Now I know that I can’t have conversations this early in the morning, because I start speaking in goddamn metaphors.”

Sora absolutely cackled. “Aw. You thought you were going to _prune_ me. That’s really sweet, Riku.”

“Shut the fuck up, it’s too _early_ ,” he complained.

Sora continued to laugh, choked and taunting, but his hand pressing against Riku’s face was soft and light, curving around his jaw as his fingers brushed his neck. Riku decided then that he could open his eyes, positive now that this couldn’t be a dream since even his dreams exhibited some form of anxiety, but now, he just felt warm like fire and perfectly content with the smoke.

He opened his eyes to Sora’s big blues gazing down lovingly at him. He opened his eyes to see Sora’s sincerest smile, already on him before he even knew Riku would _see_ and it sent a jolt through Riku’s chest. He lunged forward and buried his face in the juncture between his shoulder and neck as Sora yelped in surprise. Riku playfully bit into the skin and Sora sputtered, yelling for him to stop but they both knew he didn’t mean it.

Smiling, Riku pulled away, a wide grin on his face as he looked down at Sora in his arms, whose face had gone a little red, but there it was like a reward – the wide, sunny grin he hadn’t seen in too long. “Wow. Look at you.”

“Huh?”

“You’re _smiling_. Like, with your teeth, like you used to. I haven’t seen you this happy since high school.”

Sora’s smile faltered a little, but only a little. He leaned in to softly bring their lips together, still smiling all the while. “You’ve literally always made me this happy,” he said against Riku’s lips.

“Huh,” Riku murmured considerably, smiling to himself as Sora laid his head over his chest.

Later on that day, they would have to go and get Sora’s stuff and Riku would finally look Seifer in the face after everything. Later on that day, they would meet up with Roxas and Axel (Roxas who would see them and immediately groan and Axel who would wink the world’s most obvious wink) and make the drive together. Later on that day, Roxas would turn from the passenger’s seat to see Sora and Riku absently holding hands and feign severe annoyance at the PDA (“Oh my God, come on! Is it always going to be like this?!”), but Riku would look up and see him smiling in the side view mirror.

Later on that day, they’d have to step out of this cocoon and face the world, but for now they didn’t have to do anything but be together. Sora breathed slow and even against Riku’s neck and Riku let the feeling of Sora smiling against his chest lull him back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this self-indulgent dreck, drop me a comment?


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